Do we need split media CDs for F12?

[Kevin Kofler]

Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> For as far as Fedora is concerned (not third party repositories) at least
> it seems obvious that our update process is somewhat flawed in this
> aspect, breaking the upgrade path.

And that's why preupgrade exists.

Any upgrading method not relying on the network will necessarily have this
upgrade path issue.

> Fedora: "We know you wanted to install a different set of packages, but
> here's a LiveCD that you can then tweak after the installation, to get the
> packages you originally wanted. Ohw, and please mind you cannot 1) use a
> kickstart file to automate the installation or 2) upgrade the current
> Fedora installation.

There are other upgrade methods, e.g. preupgrade (or the unsupported methods
to run yum upgrade directly on the system). If you don't have a fast enough
network access for that, how do you install the regular updates? HD-based
upgrades with the DVD image can also be used (you just need to make sure
you create a small ext2/ext3/ext4 /images partition when you install the
system, and you can then put your image along with the kernel and initrd
from the pxeboot directory on that, enter it into GRUB and boot from it, no
media needed at all, also saves money).

For installs, I don't see how the live CDs are a bad idea, you start with a
reasonable package set which "just works" and you can add what you need
afterwards.

> You might also not be able to customize the installation to it's full
> extent.

How so? Unwanted packages can always be removed. The only customization you
can't do is the "one big /" partition, and that limitation might already be
gone in F12 (we just need ext4 support in GRUB, assuming the live images
won't switch to btrfs already).

I definitely recommend the KDE Live CD as the medium to use for initial
installs.

        Kevin Kofler